A Rising Tide Lifts all Boats?

Analysis of SY2024-2025 Grade 5 Math Initiative

Theresa Szczepanski

Rising Tide Charter Public School

My Audience

Stakeholders at Rising Tide Charter Public School

  • Head of School, Principal, Assistant Principals, Department Chairs, and Board of Trustees

Technical Skill

  • some may have some statistical training but most do not
  • assume general, college-educated audience level of understanding
  • can assume familiarity with the concept of assessment and accountability testing in the K-12 public school sector

What are the Star Screening Tests?

  • computerized, adaptive tests

  • found to be reliable and valid predictors of students’ academic growth in literacy and mathematics with “convincing evidence”1

How were they administered?

  • Who: Students in Grades 5-10

  • What: Star Literacy and Star Math

  • When: Tri-annual screenings beginning in SY2023-2024

What Metrics Do they Provide?

Test Achievement Percentile Rank: PR

  • A student with a PR of 54 scored higher than 54% of students in their grade level.

  • A student is classified as At/Above Benchmark for their grade level if their achievement percentile is at least 40.

Student Growth Percentile: SGP

  • Measure of a student’s improvement compared to national peers with the same achievement percentile rank on their first test.

What question will we examine?

  • Is there a relationship between Rising Tide’s 2024-2025 Grade 5 Mathematics programming initiatives and Grade 5 student growth in mathematics?

Why?

Our G5 Math students were struggling…

A bar blot with Grade level (ordered, factor) on the x-axis and the median MCAS math student growth percentile (SGP) in math on the y-axis.. Plot illustrates the relationship between the two variables.

And they struggled considerably more than their peers in the state

  • In the Spring of 2023, 75% of G5 math students scored below the 25th percentile for growth.1

What changed in SY2024-2025?

  • Increase instructional hours dedicated to math in Grade 5

  • Train teachers on the use of the G5 Math curricular materials

Schedule

  • Provide a year-long course calendar mapping of lessons to weekly school schedule

  • Move 4 units from the G5 Math course to the G5 STEM course

Instruction

  • Set clear expectations on:
    • exclusive use of high quality instructional materials
    • frequency and type of assessment

Accountability

  • Provide district-level, standards-aligned assessments one month after each unit for analysis1

What did we observe?

A bar blot with Grade level (ordered, factor) on the x-axis and the median student growth percentile (SGP) in math on the y-axis, faceted by school year (ordered, factor). Plot illustrates the relationship between the three variables.

What did we observe (option 2)?

A bar blot with School year (ordered, factor) on the x-axis and the median 5th grade student growth percentile (SGP) in math on the y-axis. Plot illustrates the relationship between the two variables.

What about our students on IEPs?

Lifting All G5 Students

  • Providing students with daily, grade appropriate assignments coupled with frequent standards-aligned assessments supported all learners

    • G5 math students across all demographic groups grew considerably more in SY2024-2025

    • G5 math students on IEPs grew less than their non-disabled peers, but the gap has narrowed considerably.

Next Steps

  • examine Grade 5 math growth and achievement as measured by MCAS Spring 2025 results

  • use the MCAS Spring 2025 Item reports to identify potential curricular alignment issues in tested subjects

  • provide the same school-level supports to other grade levels and subjects to address student opportunity gaps.1

Appendix

DACSS 604 Spring 2025